Weekend Box-Office: April 15-17, 2011

Animated family-oriented movies
are kickin' ass this year, posting the 3 biggest weekend openings
of the year including the latest, RIO, with garnered the highest
opening of the year with $40M in the first three days of release.
The 2nd biggest opening of the year was $38M for RANGO, with HOP
rounding out the top 3 with a $37M opening just a couple of weeks
ago. RIO actually opened a week ago internationally and has
already made over $165M around the world.

So what does this say about
this year's choice of movies? Well, apparently there haven't been
enough "real movies" (non-animated) to truly excite
audiences so far this year. Heck, the only 2 non-animated movies
in this
year's TOP 5 are Adam Sandler's JUST GO WITH IT and Seth
Rogen's THE GREEN HORNET, for eff's sakes. Will this start a new
trend of releasing more and more animated movies? (which already
seems to be the case)

But enough about animated
movies! I'm sure you're all wondering how SCREAM 4 compared with
its predecessors. Well, opening in 2nd place was certainly not
what the studio was hoping for, but at least it opened with more
dollars than the original, right? (although I don't see this one
breaking the $75M mark myself) See the SCREAM break-down below:

The rest of the top 10 was pretty straight-forward
with INSIDIOUS, once again, losing the least amount of its
audience from last weekend (26%), while YOUR HIGHNESS dropped from
6th to 10th place and lost close to 60% of its already-small
audience. The big "surprise" in the top 10 was the
limited release of the Robert Redford-director THE CONSPIRATOR,
which managed a 9th place opening, despite being released in only
700 theaters.

The three films to get knocked out of the top 10
in order to make room for the three new movies included LIMITLESS
($70M), THE LINCOLN LAWYER ($51M) and DIARY OF A WIMPY KID:
RODRICK RULES ($48M), all three of which can be considered
"successes" when compared to their respective budgets.

Next week sees the release of 3 new movies
including the latest film from Tyler Perry entitled MADEA'S
BIG HAPPY FAMILY, Walt Disney's latest nature movie entitled AFRICAN
CATS, as well as a rare drama opening at this time of year
entitled WATER
FOR ELEPHANTS (not to be mistaken with the latter film),
starring the recently married Reese Witherspoon as well as that
pasty-looking kid from the Twilight movies. So what film do you
think will be in the #1 spot next weekend?VOTE
HERE!!!